The present generation, wearied by its chimerical efforts, relapses into complete indolence. Its condition is that of a man who has only fallen asleep towards morning: first of all come great dreams, then a feeling...

Contentment is, after all, simply refined indolence.

I saw myself as reviving a certain mode of life, a mode that had been almost lost: the contemplative life of the country gentleman, in harmony with his status and history. In Renaissance times they...

I decided I would teach Mrs. P. a lesson by cooking my own meal.

God’s prayer-line is not a wheel of fortune or lottery for the indolent.

I was young at Myna, that first time. When had the change come? He had retreated to here, to Collegium, to spin his awkward webs of intrigue and to lecture at the College. Then, years...

Twas doing nothing was his curse. Is there a vice can plague us worse?

The last shall not become the first if the last is lagging behind.

I do nothing, with as little shame as satisfaction. It is the state that suits me best. I write the odd poem when it is there, that is the only thing worth doing. There is...

You appear to me not to have understood the nature of my body & mind. Partly from ill-health, & partly from an unhealthy & reverie-like vividness of Thoughts, & (pardon the pedantry of the phrase)...

It is not a single cowardice that drives us into fiction’s fantasies. We often fear that literature is a game we can’t afford to play — the product of idleness and immoral ease. In the...